8/25/2011

Sure Shots: Argo; Taken 2; Paul Greengrass


 * The other day I screwed up the plot of Argo, Ben Affleck's follow-up to The Town, so I'm going to make sure I get it right this time. The film centers on the Iran hostage crisis, and how two governments came together with a fake movie plot to rescue a bunch of diplomats. Ben Affleck is also starring, along with Scott McNairy, Bryan Cranston, John Goodman, and Alan Arkin. Now fresh from his stint on Friday Night Lights and this summer's Super 8, Kyle Chandler has joined the cast in an unspecified role. [USAToday]

* Now that the hang up over Liam Neeson's availability is over, it's time for him to get off the ol' rocking chair and get back to making old folks look tougher than they are. Luc Besson has revealed to Comingsoon that Taken 2 is set to shoot in October. The man with the greatest non-silly/made up name in history, Olivier Megaton, will direct. Apparently everyone will be back, from Maggie Grace to Famke Janssen. I'd much prefer to see Megaton hard at work on Mathilda, the Leon sequel we'll probably never ever see.

* Seriously, can we get Paul Greengrass behind the camera again? Like now? He's got a lot of making up to do after Green Zone, and while he hopes his Martin Luther King biopic will get made, the chances are looking pretty slim. Novelist Robert Harris, whose novel The Ghost was the basis for last year's The Ghost Writer, tells TheTelegraph that Greengrass is attached to direct his next book, The Fear Index. The story centers around a genius who develops a hedge fund computer system that can predict human mood swings. We'll have to wait and see if Greengrass really is on board, but so far I've liked every adaptation of one of Harris' books. His novel, Enigma, about codebreakers in WWII, was turned into a great movie back in 2001.